Will Bourbon Street Bring the Tourists Back to New Orleans?

Dusk falls over Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, almost one year after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. The city is struggling to make ends meet while its tourism industry remains crippled.

On the surface, which is the only part of most major cities that
tourists visit, New Orleans seems to have cleaned itself up quite
nicely in the year since Katrina. French Quarter businesses have
swept their stoops and hung banners, and bawdy Bourbon Street is
awash in neon; Creole stalwarts like Galatoire's and Arnaud's are
once again dishing up gumbo and crawfish etouffe, and live music
spills nightly from funky clubs Uptown and on Frenchmen Street, an
entertainment strip adjacent to the French Quarter; even the mammoth
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, which became a symbol of human suffering to
millions of television viewers in the storm's aftermath, is wrapping
up a $60 million renovation

There's only one thing missing, and that unfortunately, is the
hordes of tourists.

Though the areas of most interest to visitors got through Katrina
pretty much intact, the haunting images (including tourists trapped
in hotels) and constant media attention left over from Katrina has
kept the bulk of sightseers from returning. "It's been slow. Seems
like everybody's doing about 30 percent of the business they were
doing pre-Katrina," says Tom Mullen, whose grandmother founded the
French Quarter psychic reading shop Bottom of the Cup Tea Room back
in 1929. On a display shelf in the shop, next to the crystal balls
and good-fortune candles, are packets of incense that promise to
"Cleanse Negativity" and restore "Peace and Balance."

In the sweltering summer of 2006, New Orleans' anxious tourism industry
could use a truckload of the stuff. Hurricane Katrina
brought the city's multi-billion convention and tourism industry to a
dead halt. Meetings and conventions that had been scheduled years
ahead of time cancelled, along with the hundreds of thousands of
attendees that would have filled hotel rooms and restaurants. For
months, the few casual tourists who showed up were almost exclusively
families of FEMA contractors and construction workers.
(Paradoxically, two of those neighborhoods that were hardest hit, and
where few tourists ventured before the storm  the Lower Ninth Ward
and Lakeview  have become popular destinations for out-of-town
visitors.)

A lot is riding on the city's ability to lure visitors back. For
better or worse, New Orleans has long staked a disproportionate share
of its economic health on the tourism and convention business. Before
Katrina, tourist spending pumped up to $6 billion into the local
economy, employed 80,000 and fueled more than one-third of the city's operating budget.
Getting those visitors back is key to the city's recovery, and to its long-term viability  perhaps even
more so in a smaller, post-Katrina economy, when luring new business
and industry will likely be an even greater challenge than it was
before the storm.

Tourism officials have rolled out a new advertising campaign, featuring a new slogan ("COME FALL IN LOVE WITH
NEW ORLEANS ALL OVER AGAIN") and homegrown celebrities such as
Emeril Lagasse, Wynton Marsalis and actress Patricia Clarkson. But
prospective tourists could be forgiven if they're still confused.
Almost since the slow recovery began, New Orleans has been sending
mixed messages, begging the federal government for more financial
help and asking the state to send in the National Guard to help
battle a violent crime wave, while assuring skittish tourists and
convention planners that the city's historic attractions are intact,
the hospitality infrastructure is up and running and public safety in
tourist zones remains nothing to worry about.

Just because they are mixed, however, doesn't mean that the messages
aren't all valid  and therein lies the marketing problem. "Our
residential areas have been severely devastated," says Angele Davis,
Louisiana's secretary of culture, recreation and tourism. "We're
rebuilding those residential areas. But right now our tourism infrastructure is
intact, and that's the message we have to get out there. If we don't,
we will lose the small cultural venues and businesses, the music
clubs and galleries and antique shops that make up the fabric of New
Orleans. They're holding on. They're waiting for the visitors to come
back. But it's been a tough summer so far."

City officials do have some real successes to point to: Mardi Gras,
the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and a series of smaller
festivals went on as planned. Meanwhile, the city's major museums
have reopened, and its big-name restaurants have either reopened or
announced plans to do so this fall. Popular tourist attractions like
the Aquarium of the Americas and Audubon Zoo are up and running, and
the cruise ships that use New Orleans as a home port  and carry more
than 700,000 passengers a year  will be back in service by the end
of 2006. "We're back in business," says Kelly Schulz, vice president of
communications for the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and
Visitors Bureau. "A lot of people out there are thinking that New
Orleans is not ready for visitors, which is not the case at all."

Most importantly, perhaps, the city held its first large convention,
a meeting of the American Library Association that drew 17,000
delegates, in June. Meeting and convention planners were watching it
closely. "If Library had been a failure, it would have been a serious
problem," says Deborah Sexton, president of the Professional
Convention Management Association. The gathering went off without a
hitch, as long as you don't make much of the fact that it coincided
with the arrival of 300 National Guard troops, an event that received
widespread news coverage. Many associations, at the urging of nervous
board members, have opted to move their conventions elsewhere. But
tourism officials have lined up some big events for the fall and
spring, including a meeting of the National Association of Realtors
that could draw as many as 25,000.

Still, the negative images linger, and the city is facing a difficult
and protracted recovery. More than half the population is still in
exile, and huge swaths of New Orleans remain largely abandoned while
residents wait for rebuilding money to arrive. Citywide some 60% of local businesses have most likely not reopened, according to a survey by Louisiana State University.

Meanwhile, business owners like Mullen, of Bottom of the Cup Tea
Room, are waiting for the figurative tea leaves to signal better
times ahead. "People from other parts of the nation are concerned
about the water, the air and the seafood, of all things," Mullen
says, as a couple of middle-aged tourists negotiate a price for a
double psychic reading. But he's determined to ride out the
post-hurricane storm. "We're not going anywhere," he adds. "It's just
gonna be a long haul." Far too long, unless more visitors themselves make the haul.